Today

was a good day...

And we spent a lot of it outside. It was the first time we have had a "family work day" where we got to work on something together for what seems like a really long time. It was once again affirmed just how much fun it is to work together! It was a beautiful, sunny day and we moved a lot of junk (treasures?!) around in preparation for the pending building project to begin and for taking down some trees that need to come down to make way for my parents' home and which will hopefully also supply them with flooring!

It was also a day of discovery. Spring is coming. The first was these little purple and orange (I called them "Kali Nora flowers") flowers, and a honey bee had also found them. Kali kept checking on them throughout the day and watered them with some of the water she was helping remove from her swimming pool so we could move it. She noticed them begin to close up at the day's end and she commented, "now they are just 'Kali flowers'."

I took a moment in between carrying rolls of wire to see what might be springing forth in Nora's garden. It is special to see little shoots coming up from the ground and buds on some of the trees. Kali also rescued some daffodil bulbs that, in our haste to keep working we were ready to discard. They are now tucked safely in another spot that will not be disturbed and she has proclaimed daffodils her favorite flower!

A quick "inside the house" update. First of all, after my last post I decided I needed to give my Mom's hardboiled egg recipe another try. I've given it two good attempts - bring to a boil, set the timer for 10 minutes, then cool them down. And I've had two frustrating tries at peeling eggs. I'm going to go back to forgetting about them! On the other hand, I faithfully watered my sprouts every day this time. By the look of them on the one day, I thought the radishes were moldy. I felt a little silly when I took them to Jason commenting that I should have just forgotten about them and noting that my paying closer attention got worse results, only to learn that they were the little tiny root hairs (which I had missed last time as they came on one of their days of neglect).

A report on the "no grocery stores" for Lent. No one is going hungry. In fact tonight, I tried a fancy new recipe that I found by googling "ricotta recipes." It was one of the first I found and I had all the ingredients. It was fun to use my homemade ricotta for the first time. See http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/22837/meat-loaf-with-ricotta.html if you want a recipe with A LOT of protein - meat, eggs, parmesan and ricotta cheese. We had cornbread with it and stir fried kale to balance it out!!

However, in the process of making dinner tonight I did empty out one food item in the house that is not in season, not a the Farmer's Market and may be noticed as "missing." We are 100% out of parmesan cheese. Kali doesn't know it yet and as long as we don't make plain noodles anytime in the next month we'll be okay...